The blurb:
Welcome to Mae Pruett's LA. A 'black-bag' publicist at one of Hollywood's most powerful crisis PR firms, Mae's job isn't to get good news out, it's to keep the bad news in and contain the scandals. But just as she starts to question her job and life choices, her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and everything changes.
Investigating with the help of an ex-boyfriend, Mae dives headlong into a neon joyride through the jungle of contemporary Hollywood. Pitted against the twisted system she's worked so hard to perpetuate, she's desperately fighting for redemption, and her life.
Not a million miles away from Jonathan Kellerman in some ways — at least, the Kellerman of a little ways back, before you started to do some addition and realise that, if time has moved on in that world at the pace the text seems to indicate, Milo served in Vietnam, which means that he and Delaware are in their 70s now but still leap over cars and punch bad guys. (I'm sorry, this has nothing to do with Everybody Knows; it's just one of those that really gets in the way of enjoying later Delaware novels and I wish Kellerman would acknowledge it. Or let the poor bastards retire.) The action is fast paced, based in the intricacies of a particular profession — child psychologist in one case, black-bag publicist in the other — and crosses into the seedy underside of LA.
The seedy/wealthy crossover is where Mae Pruett lives and earns her keep; she's the one who keeps the really bad stories out of TMZ and other celeb-based media. That makes her, in many ways, an unlikeable character: she helps the rich and famous avoid any sort of consequences for their actions. Balanced against that, the first professional action we see from her is protecting an actress from being fired for the bruises she sustained in a serious sexual assault. That said, that job was pretty carefully chosen to show Mae in a better light than she might otherwise have appeared, given some of the other jobs anti-publicists like her do.
Her partner in crime, ex-boyfriend Chris, has a similarly unlikeable background — a violent cop who was drummed out of the force for too many uses of excessive force. These days, he's basically an enforcer. If you need the crap scared (or beaten) out of someone, Chris is your guy.
So, we have two assholes in need of redemption, basically.
The plot is very fast, and the writing is very descriptive. Mae and Chris are part of a crooked system — willingly so, especially in Mae's case — and have plenty of grime on their souls. But they gradually work to the point of not just wanting to be better, but taking some action that way. At first, it's hugely tainted by self-interest (read: $$$ coming their way) and Mae can't really acknowledge that to herself, but they do eventually move in the general direction of a purer motive.
Very dark and cynical, especially in the latter half of the book.
Started: 18 April 2025
Finished: 21 April 2025
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